This Will Be My Undoing

by Morgan Jerkins

  I go to two sessions with an on-campus psychologist, but I am afraid of going to her for more because if she finds out that I am losing it, I might be urged to take a year off from school. She categorizes me as having mild OCD. She suggests outside psychologists, cognitive behavioral therapy, maybe even medication. I do not explore any of these options. Black people do not do therapy. Although my stepfather is a psychologist, he is an outlier in my environment.

  Why should we employ modern science when its advancements would not have happened if black bodies weren’t being exploited? J. Marion Sims, the father of modern gynecology, experimented on enslaved black women without their consent and, in his autobiography, praised three slaves’ endurance to withstand experiments without any anesthesia because their contributions would help all women. Doctors at Johns Hopkins took the cells of Henrietta Lacks and used her genetic material for medical breakthroughs for over six decades without her permission. Benjamin Rush, the father of modern psychiatry and cofounder of the first anti-slavery society in America, believed that all black people, or “negroes,” suffered from negritude, or blackness. Rush argued that blackness was a mild form of leprosy that could only be cured by becoming white. He also asserted that Africans went insane due to slavery. If this is our legacy and we cannot trust the systems in place, where else can we look but up?

  We go to God with our problems. Therapy is for white people with money. It is a pastime, a hobby, a luxury. It is for the religiously and spiritually lazy, not for us. How dare I admit my weakness when my people have survived far worse than a sick stepfather? Black women had to take care of everyone: their masters, their husbands, their mistresses, the mistresses’ children. I thought being able to withstand any and everything was not only my responsibility but also a gift from my foremothers. The Strong Black Woman is the backbone of her family, home, and community, and so she is supposed to be a bit aggressive. She is able to withstand any kind of pressure or pain. She doesn’t need to rely on anyone but herself. She does not hurt. On the surface, this ideal is a compliment to black women’s resilience and endurance, but it dehumanizes us by not acknowledging our human weaknesses and needs. The Strong Black Woman does not ask for help not because she does not need it. Her emotions are crushed underneath that totem. She is always willing, always giving, and easily taken advantage of. Because what other option is there? What avenues does she have through which change can be a possibility?

  We have reclaimed that resilience and transformed it into self-empowerment and self-love in the form of “Black Girl Magic,” both a phrase and a movement. Black Girl Magic is, according to writer Clover Hope, “a declaration of pride amongst black girls and women.” However, its singular definition is as elusive as the person or company who claims the term.1 The long-held belief is that CaShawn Thompson, a feminist writer, popularized the international phenomenon in order to “counteract the negativity” of the images of black women in our society. It began as a Twitter hashtag and grew into a movement showcasing the accomplishments of black women like Beyoncé; actress Amandla Stenberg; writer, producer, and director Ava DuVernay; Olympic gymnasts Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas; the Williams sisters; and former First Lady Michelle Obama.

  But in 2016, Elle.com published a controversial op-ed by Dr. Linda Chavers, a scholar of twentieth-century American and African-American literature with a PhD from Harvard, about Black Girl Magic. When she heard the phrase “Black Girl Magic,” Dr. Chavers interpreted it as synonymous with the Strong Black Woman stereotype. She argued that glorifying black women during their highest moments obscures their suffering, which is another form of dehumanization. In a subsequent interview with For Harriet, she admitted that she did not know much about the movement, but went on to explain that “if we keep perpetuating suggestions of being exceptional, we’re getting into dangerous territory. We’ve done it before. We’ve done it again, whether we originate it or it originates explicitly from white supremacy, to me, it doesn’t matter.” She also reinforced that she loves black women and apologized for not making that explicitly clear in her exploration of the issue.

  When Dr. Chavers’s article went live, it was met with immediate backlash from black women, including myself. I was thrown that an academic would not do her research on a movement before writing about it; the move seemed to undermine her training as a writer and scholar. Others could not understand why such a piece was published on a mainstream, predominantly white website, and felt like it was an editorial failure for it to have been green-lit in the first place. In fact, some even suspected that it was a conspiracy on the part of the editors to make a black woman a puppet; her article dismissing an empowering movement would get many hits while she would be left to the wolves. About a day later, a rebuttal by writer and editor Ashley Ford appeared on the same website, arguing that Black Girl Magic is not about being superhuman but rather reclaiming what others refuse to see in us; it was much better received. But as I sat longer with Dr. Chavers’s piece, I felt less spite towards her and more remorse about the way her point of view was almost immediately dismissed throughout social media networks, especially Twitter. Although I agree more with Ford’s argument, I regret that there was not a larger discussion about what it means to be a part of Black Girl Magic. Dr. Chavers said that she did not know much about “Black Girl Magic,” but who can honestly claim that they do? There are many ways to counteract negativity. And what the backlash only scantily acknowledged was that Dr. Chavers is disabled.

  Four months after her Black Girl Magic piece, she published another essay on the same website describing her battle with multiple sclerosis. She opens by talking about how her hand suddenly begins to shake uncontrollably while she’s giving a lecture on Albert Camus’s The Plague, and so she worries that her students will think that she’s nervous. About the intersection of her blackness, womanhood, and disability, she writes, “Chronic illness is, if nothing else, an education in how much every single part of your body actually matters. As a black woman, it doesn’t take much to make me hyper-aware of my body.”

  The vast majority of the images, individuals, and accomplishments showcased by the Black Girl Magic movement are of able-bodied black women. Gymnasts who can tumble and fly through the air as though natural law bends to their will, and not vice versa. Actresses who express themselves with great fluidity throughout a range of scenes. Politicians whose words, ringing clear like a bell, can have the impact of a tidal wave. Musicians who can sing, play, and move with great versatility. Activists whose bodies are at the front lines of nationwide protests and pepper-sprayed, handcuffed, and sent to jail, only to rejoin as soon as they are released. While these black women may not be as heralded as their white female counterparts, they are overwhelmingly more prominent and praised than black women with disabilities. Physically disabled black women are virtually invisible in our cultural landscape. We do not usually see them making music onstage, as love interests in movies, or as emblematic black beauties in fashion campaigns. They do not become Barbies, congresswomen, award-winning scientists. We have no Amy Purdy or Marlee Matlin or Jacqueline du Pré or Jamie Brewer. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2014, black women ages sixteen and up had the highest participation in the labor force at 59.2 percent. White women trailed behind at 56.2 percent. However, that same year, 22.2 percent of black women with disabilities participated in the labor force, almost seven points behind the participation rate of white women with disabilities at 29 percent. Black disabled women also have the lowest income out of any other race/gender disability category.2

  Still, tracing the black female body politic from slavery to present day, we think of how our vaginas were raped by white slave masters, how our stomachs became swollen with children who were sent out in the fields as soon as they could walk, how our backs were rent and blood would gush from our torn flesh, how our breasts were drained by white children. How our hair is seen as wild and animal-like, our asses as emblematic of our inherently grotesque nature, our ski
n color the basis of all white people’s problems with us, and our womanhood an extra incentive for them to invest their hatred in us. We are constantly remembering how our bodies were never our own, and movements like Black Girl Magic are reclamatory because they demonstrate what we can achieve with our bodies when we have autonomy over them. But for black women with disabilities, autonomy is a battle fought both from without and within. Every morning, I can rise from my bed, make myself breakfast, take a shower, do my hair, and dress. None of these tasks is a struggle. But for a physically disabled black woman, just getting out of bed in the morning—an ability I take for granted—may require a herculean effort. She must wrestle with her own body before she can expend any energy on how the outside world perceives it and the space it occupies there.

  Black women face a dizzying conundrum. We reside outside the margins of a white patriarchal society and thus we are often dehumanized. To regain our humanity, we focus on what it means to be a black woman, where black women can find safe spaces, and how black women can protect ourselves within white spaces. These are worthy concerns, but they assume a black woman’s physical body is still perceived within our own community as “normal.” As Crystal R. Emery said in her 2016 essay for Time, because she is a black woman with a disability, a “wheelchair-riding quadriplegic,” she is stigmatized in three ways: for not being white, male, or able-bodied. The dismissal of Dr. Chavers’s words reinforces our ableist privilege. Her second piece should have prompted us to recontextualize her original argument, but unfortunately it received less than 126 Facebook shares; her first essay received over 9,000. We do not teach young black women that they should recognize and aspire to the achievements of black women with disabilities, perhaps because we know so little about them—and we must change that.

  I used to call it my “second tongue.” My left inner labium protruded approximately four centimeters from my body, and I do not remember it ever looking different. It was thick, wrinkly, and long, and I thought the extra skin was fun as a child, a bigger appendage that I could play with. When I pulled back the flap of my left labium majora, my left labium minora would immediately unfurl like a tongue. My mother would frequently pop into my bedroom when I was changing for church or gathering my towel to go into the bathroom to bathe and ask, “That thing doesn’t hurt?” With my legs together, I would look down at myself, my vulva seemingly neat from that vantage point, and shake my head. That “thing” did not hurt, until it did.

  The pain began somewhere around middle or high school. If I wore stockings underneath my plaid skirts or dress pants, the nylon would rub up against my inner thighs and the friction would cause my vulva to protrude and my “second tongue” would unfurl again, sometimes even sticking out of my panties. When this would happen, I could only readjust the elastic band and hope that that this would push my left labium minora back into its original, hidden position. Wearing shorts was its own kind of torture. Denim chafed against it, pain surging and swelling from the inside out. I figured that if I began a strict exercise regimen I would lose weight in my thighs and that would eliminate the chafing altogether. Unfortunately, I soon realized after several weeks of elliptical and treadmill sessions and calorie cutting that most of the weight I lost was from my stomach and face. No dietary regimen could stop my “second tongue” from growing.

  When I moved into an apartment in Harlem that had no air-conditioning, the humid ninety-degree weather presented another challenge. It didn’t matter if I wore stockings, shorts, a tight skirt, or a maxi dress: my left labium minora would still stick to the inside of my panties. I would trudge the two flights of stairs to my bedroom, close the door behind me, place my two fans on the opposite sides of my desk chair and turn them on to the highest intensity, sit at that desk chair, remove everything from the waist down—my left labium minora hitting the seat before any other part of my body—and delicately massage in whipped shea butter until the pain subsided. I never thought that this ritual was problematic because I never assumed that this pain was a problem. I never assumed that it was a problem because I assumed that pain was an integral element of womanhood.

  I got my first period when I was ten years old, and the first several times I was plagued by severe migraines. When I whimpered and complained to my mother about never wanting a period again, before giving me a Midol she told me that I would have to deal with this for decades. When I had my first gynecological exam, seconds before the speculum was placed inside of me, I looked at my mother sitting to the right of the table and she said, “This is just a part of being a woman,” believing that that solidarity would help. It didn’t. When the speculum opened me up, my face contorted as I tightened every muscle in my body because I believed that the gynecologist had gone too far, that I was too open. I wanted to be closed again. I learned from my mother that pain from first-time sex and birth was normal, even to be expected. My conceptions of pain were inextricable from my conditioning as a cisgender woman, and the pain I experienced from my “second tongue,” along with the meticulous rituals to soothe it, made me feel not only womanly but also superhuman for being able to endure it. I thought that the pain in and of itself was in fact admirable. I was able to present myself to the world as a bubbly, eloquent, and educated black woman while the site of my womanhood afflicted me. I thought: This is how I will become strong, through how well I can obscure pain. I was never taught that the world would nurture me, so I perfected the ways of hiding. I figured that because I was born with a longer labium, I was destined to take care of it. If I relinquished that honor, then I would be unworthy of this life that I have, this grand body that I inhabit. I did research to support my theory. Women of the Bahima clan, in western and southern Uganda, keep their labia minora long enough to cover their vaginal opening in order to make access harder for potential rapists. In Rwanda, girls will pull on their labia for ten to twenty minutes a day in order to lengthen them so that once they marry, their husbands will have an easier time making them orgasm and squirt. Some women, particularly those in Zimbabwe, have even gone as far as getting procedures in order to stretch and elongate their labia. See? I thought. There were other women of the diaspora who had, or aspired to have, long inner lips just like mine. Maybe, I thought, it was some kind of badge of honor, even though the only marks I received were the extra ridges appearing along its surface from years and years of chafing and sticking. The more I focused on it as a gift, the more I was in denial over my own personal body. I trained myself to normalize the pain until I shamed myself whenever I sensed its reemergence, but in the recesses of my mind I wondered if all of this endurance was necessary. When I became a more active feminist during college, my desire to grit and bear the weight of my left labium minora intensified. Publications such as Mic, Broadly, and Cosmopolitan emphasized that labiaplasty stems from insecurity; those who underwent the procedure were victims of the pressure from the patriarchal society in which we all live, where women are expected to be perfect. One of my closest friends in college was a premed major, and she tried to dissuade me from labiaplasty, suggesting documentaries about the misogyny surrounding labiaplasty procedures. I didn’t have the heart to tell, or show, her the size of my left labium minora so that she could better gauge my situation.

  If I underwent the surgery, would that make me less of a feminist? And if I became less of a feminist, what standard would my feminism be measured against: white women’s?

  My doubts didn’t stop me from scheduling a consultation with a fancy Long Island doctor in late 2014. My mother and I drove to his plush office, where I had to remove everything from the waist down and lie back on an examination table while the doctor used what looked like a Popsicle stick to poke my labia to show my mother and the nurse where incisions could be made to make me symmetrical. I felt like I wasn’t in the room as a whole person. No one made eye contact with me even though one of the most vulnerable parts of my body was being scrutinized. After I dressed, my mother and I were directed into the doctor’s office, where he
showed us before and after photos of past patients, before going off topic, chatting at length about his views on terrorism and his son’s active service overseas. I was stunned. I mean, this was my vagina that we were talking about, a vagina that had yet to be penetrated or give birth to a child. A vagina that, for lack of a better word, had not been used. My vagina was wholly private, wholly mine, which made me feel all the more vulnerable about this process. The doctor’s assistant, his blonde and well-groomed wife, assured us that everything would be fine before giving me a student discount for good measure.

  It took me over a year, and much discussion with my mother, to decide whether I would go through with the surgery. The same thoughts kept swirling in my head: Was I a bad feminist if I went through with the surgery? What if the only reason I wanted it was because I was worried about what some man would think? What if the pain was all psychological, a direct result of my insecurity dealing with the body that God gave me? Why couldn’t I just deal with the pain? I wasn’t suffering from some chronic illness. I didn’t have cancer. I didn’t have gangrene or hepatitis B. Why couldn’t I suck it up? The pain was not impairing my life at all. My foremothers had gone through far worse, and I had the nerve to care about some extra skin between my legs. That’s not strength, I thought, that’s cowardice. Then I remembered all the times I’d had to skillfully maneuver the lower half of my body while in the midst of conversation so that no one would think that there was something wrong with me. I thought about frequent bathroom trips and the subsequent pain whenever I tried to readjust. I relived the thick of summer when I was both hot and sore, when time would pass me by as I sat with my legs splayed across the floor. I didn’t tell anyone other than the man who I was starting to date about my imminent surgery.